Azazel (
Hebrew:
עזאזל,
Azazel,
Aramaic: רמשנאל,
Arabic: عزازل
Azazil) is an
enigmatic name from the
Hebrew
scriptures and
Apocrypha. The word's
first appearance is in
Leviticus 16, where
a goat is designated "for Azazel" and outcast in the desert as part
of
Yom Kippur.
He is considered by many to be a supernatural being mentioned in
connection with the ritual of the Day of Atonement (Lev. xvi.).
After
Satan, for whom he was in some degree a
preparation, Azazel enjoys the distinction of being the most
mysterious extrahuman character in Jewish sacred literature.
Etymology
The name itself is a combination of the words "Azaz (rugged) and el
(power/strong/of God)" in reference to the rugged and strong rocks
of the deserts in Judea. According to
Talmudic interpretation, the term "Azazel" designated
a rugged mountain or precipice in the wilderness from which the
goat was thrown down, using for it as an alternative the word "Ẓoḳ"
() (Yoma vi. 4). An etymology is found to suit this interpretation.
"Azazel"() is regarded as a compound of "az" (), strong or rough,
and "el" (), mighty, therefore a strong mountain. This derivation
is presented by a
Baraita, cited Yoma 67b,
that Azazel was the strongest of mountains.
Another etymology (ib.) connects the word with the mythological
"Uza" and "Azael", the fallen angels, to whom a reference is
believed to be found in Gen. vi. 2, 4. In accordance with this
etymology, the sacrifice of the goat atones for the sin of
fornication of which those angels were guilty (Gen. l.c.).
The
ancient rabbis, interpreting "Azazel" as
Azaz ("rugged"), and
el ("strong"), refer it to the rugged and
rough mountain cliff from which the scapegoat was cast down on Yom Kippur when the Jewish Temples in
Jerusalem
stood. (
Yoma 67b;
Sifra, Aḥare, ii. 2;
Targum Jerusalem Lev. xiv. 10, and most medieval
commentators). Most modern scholars, after having for some time
endorsed the old view, have accepted the opinion mysteriously
hinted at by
Ibn Ezra and expressly stated
by
Nachmanides to Lev. xvi. 8, that
Azazel belongs to the class of "
se'irim," goat-like
demons,
jinn haunting the desert, to which the
Israelites were wont to offer sacrifice.
(Compare "the roes and the hinds," Cant. ii. 7, iii. 5, by which
Sulamith administers an oath to the daughters of Jerusalem. The
critics were probably thinking of a Roman faun.)
In the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinical literature
Biblical Verse
Leviticus 16:8-10: "
8and Aaron shall cast lots upon the
two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel.
9And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell
for the Lord, and offer it as a sin offering;
10but the
goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive
before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away
into the wilderness to Azazel."
The Rite
Two goats were procured, similar in respect of appearance, height,
cost, and time of selection. Having one of these on his right and
the other on his left (
Rashi on Yoma 39a), the
high priest, who was assisted in this rite by two subordinates, put
both his hands into a wooden case, and took out two labels, one
inscribed "for the Lord" and the other "for Azazel." The high
priest then laid his hands with the labels upon the two goats and
said, "A sin-offering to the Lord" using the
Tetragrammaton; and the two men accompanying
him replied, "Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom for ever
and ever." He then fastened a scarlet woolen thread to the head of
the goat "for Azazel"; and laying his hands upon it again, recited
the following confession of sin and prayer for forgiveness: "O
Lord, I have acted iniquitously, trespassed, sinned before Thee: I,
my household, and the sons of Aaron Thy holy ones. O Lord, forgive
the iniquities, transgressions, and sins that I, my household, and
Aaron's children Thy holy people committed before Thee, as is
written in the law of Moses, Thy servant, 'for on this day He will
forgive you, to cleanse you from all your sins before the Lord; ye
shall be clean.'" This prayer was responded to by the congregation
present. A man was selected, preferably a priest, to take the goat
to the precipice in the wilderness; and he was accompanied part of
the way by the most eminent men of Jerusalem. Ten booths had been
constructed at intervals along the road leading from Jerusalem to
the steep mountain. At each one of these the man leading the goat
was formally offered food and drink, which he, however, refused.
When he reached the tenth booth those who accompanied him proceeded
no further, but watched the ceremony from a distance. When he came
to the precipice he divided the scarlet thread into two parts, one
of which he tied to the rock and the other to the goat's horns, and
then pushed the goat down (Yoma vi. 1-8). The cliff was so high and
rugged that before the goat had traversed half the distance to the
plain below, its limbs were utterly shattered. Men were stationed
at intervals along the way, and as soon as the goat was thrown down
the precipice, they signaled to one another by means of kerchiefs
or flags, until the information reached the high priest, whereat he
proceeded with the other parts of the ritual.
The scarlet thread is symbolically referenced in Isa. i. 18; and
the Talmud states (ib. 39a) that during the forty years that
Simon the Just was high priest, the
thread actually turned white as soon as the goat was thrown over
the precipice: a sign that the sins of the people were forgiven. In
later times the change to white was not invariable: a proof of the
people's moral and spiritual deterioration, that was gradually on
the increase, until forty years before the destruction of the
Second Temple, when the change of
color was no longer observed (l.c. 39b).
Personification of Impurity
Far from involving the recognition of Azazel as a deity, the
sending of the goat was, as stated by Nachmanides, a symbolic
expression of the idea that the people's sins and their evil
consequences were to be sent back to the spirit of desolation and
ruin, the source of all impurity. The very fact that the two goats
were presented before
God
before the one was sacrificed and the other sent into the
wilderness, was proof that Azazel was not ranked with God, but
regarded simply as the personification of wickedness in contrast
with the righteous government of God. The rite, resembling, on the
one hand, the sending off of the epha with the woman embodying
wickedness in its midst to the land of Shinar in the vision of
Zachariah (v. 6-11), and, on the other, the letting loose of the
living bird into the open field in the case of the leper healed
from the plague (Lev. xiv. 7), was, indeed, viewed by the people of
Jerusalem as a means of ridding themselves of the sins of the year.
So would the crowd, called Babylonians or Alexandrians, pull the
goat's hair to make it hasten forth, carrying the burden of sins
away with it (Yoma vi. 4, 66b; "Epistle of Barnabas," vii.), and
the arrival of the shattered animal at the bottom of the valley of
the rock of Bet Ḥadudo, twelve miles away from the city, was
signalized by the waving of shawls to the people of Jerusalem, who
celebrated the event with boisterous hilarity and amid dancing on
the hills (Yoma vi. 6, 8; Ta'an. iv. 8). Evidently the figure of
Azazel was an object of general fear and awe rather than, as has
been conjectured, a foreign product or the invention of a late
lawgiver. More as a demon of the desert, it seems to have been
closely interwoven with the mountainous region of Jerusalem.
Leader of the Rebellious Angels
This is confirmed by the
Book of
Enoch, which brings Azazel into connection with the Biblical
story of the fall of the angels, located, obviously in accordance
with ancient folk-lore, on Mount Hermon as a sort of an old Semitic
Blocksberg, a gathering-place of demons from of old (Enoch xiii.;
compare Brandt, "Mandäische Theologie," 1889, p. 38). Azazel is
represented in the Book of Enoch as the leader of the rebellious
Watchers in the time preceding the flood; he taught men the art of
warfare, of making swords, knives, shields, and coats of mail, and
women the art of deception by ornamenting the body, dyeing the
hair, and painting the face and the eyebrows, and also revealed to
the people the secrets of witchcraft and corrupted their manners,
leading them into wickedness and impurity; until at last he was, at
the Lord's command, bound hand and foot by the archangel Raphael
and chained to the rough and jagged rocks of [Ha] Duduael (= Beth
Ḥadudo), where he is to abide in utter darkness until the great Day
of Judgment, when he will be cast into the fire to be consumed
forever (Enoch viii. 1, ix. 6, x. 4-6, liv. 5, lxxxviii. 1; see
Geiger, "Jüd. Zeit." 1864, pp. 196–204).
The story of Azazel as the seducer of men and women was familiar
also to the rabbis, as may be learned from Tanna d. b. R.
Yishma'el: "The Azazel goat was to atone
for the wicked deeds of 'Uzza and 'Azzael, the leaders of the
rebellious hosts in the time of Enoch" (Yoma 67b); and still better
from
Midrash Abkir, end, Yalḳ., Gen.
44, where Azazel is represented as the seducer of women, teaching
them the art of beautifying the body by dye and paint (compare
"
Chronicles of Jerahmeel,"
trans. by
Moses Gaster, xxv. 13).
According to Pirḳe R. El. xlvi. (comp. Tos. Meg. 31a), the goat is
offered to Azazel as a bribe that he who is identical with Samael
or Satan should not by his accusations prevent the atonement of the
sins on that day.
The fact that Azazel occupied a place in Mandæan, Sabean, and
Arabian mythology (see Brandt, "Mandäische Theologie," pp. 197,
198; Norberg's "Onomasticon," p. 31;
Adriaan Reland's "De Religione
Mohammedanarum," p. 89; Kamus, s.v. "Azazel" [demon identical with
Satan]; Delitzsch, "Zeitsch. f. Kirchl. Wissensch. u. Leben," 1880,
p. 182), renders it probable that Azazel was a degraded Babylonian
deity. Origen ("Contra Celsum," vi. 43) identifies Azazel with
Satan; Pirḳe R. El. (l.c.) with Samael; and the Zohar Aḥare Mot,
following Naḥmanides, with the spirit of Esau or heathenism; still,
while one of the chief demons in the Cabala, he never attained in
the doctrinal system of Judaism a position similar to that of
Satan.
Bibliography
- Cheyne, Dictionary of the Bible;
- Hastings, Dict. Bibl., Riehm, H. W. B.;
- Hamburger, R. B. T. i. s.v.K.
- Hauck, R. E.;
- Kahisch, Comm. on Leviticus, ii. 293 et seq., 326 et seq.;
- Winer, B. R.;
In First Enoch
According to
1 Enoch (a book of the
Apocrypha), Azazel (here spelled
‘ăzā’zyēl) was one of the chief
Grigori, a group of
fallen
angels who married women. This same story (without any mention
of Azazel) is told in Genesis 6:2-4:
- That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were
fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. […] There
were giants in the earth in those days; and also afterward, when
the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore
children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men
of renown.
1 Enoch portrays Azazel as responsible for teaching people to make
weapons and
cosmetics, for which he was cast out of heaven. 1
Enoch 8:1-3a reads:
- And Azazel taught men to make swords and knives and shields and
breastplates; and made known to them the metals [of the earth] and
the art of working them; and bracelets and ornaments; and the use
of antimony and the beautifying of the eyelids; and all kinds of
costly stones and all colouring tinctures. And there arose much
godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray and became
corrupt in all their ways.
The corruption brought on by Azazel and the Grigori degrades the
human race, and the four archangels (
Michael,
Gabriel,
Raphael, and
Uriel) “saw much blood being shed upon the earth and
all lawlessness being wrought upon the earth […] The souls of men
[made] their suit, saying, "Bring our cause before the Most High;
[…] Thou seest what Azazel hath done, who hath taught all
unrighteousness on earth and revealed the eternal secrets which
were in heaven, which men were striving to learn."
God sees the sin brought about by Azazel and has Raphael “bind
Azazel hand and foot and cast him into the darkness: and make an
opening in the desert — which is in Dudael — and cast him therein.
And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with
darkness, and let him abide there forever, and cover his face that
he may not see light.”
Raphael's
binding of Azazel on the desert rocks of Dudael in upper Egypt
appears
again in the Book of Tobit, which is
found in Catholic and Orthodox bibles, but not in Jewish or most Protestant
bibles. In that Book (the only place in Christian bibles
where Raphael appears) he accompanies the young man Tobias on his
perilous journey to marry his cousin Sarah, whose seven previous
husbands had been killed on her wedding night by the demon
Asmodeus (also known as
Asmodai)
(a variant of which story is
possibly what the Sadducees are using to try to trap Jesus about marriage in the resurrection they
disbelieved in, in Matt. 22:27-28, Mark 12:18-23,
and Luke 20:29-32). Raphael saves Tobias from the same fate
by showing him how to deal with that demon, too.
Azazel's fate is foretold near the end of 1 Enoch 2:8, where God
says, “On the day of
the great judgement
he shall be cast into the fire. […] The whole earth has been
corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him
ascribe all sin."
In 3 Enoch, Azazel is one of the three angels (Azza [Shemhazai] and
Uzza [Ouza] are the other two) who opposed Enoch's high rank when
he became the angel
Metatron. Whilst they
were fallen at this time they were still in Heaven, but Metatron
held a dislike for them, and had them cast out. They were
thenceforth known as the 'three who got the most blame' for their
involvement in the fall of the angels marrying women. It should be
remembered that Azazel and Shemhazai were said to be the leaders of
the 200 fallen, and Uzza and Shemhazai were tutelary guardian
angels of Egypt with both Shemhazai and Azazel and were responsible
for teaching the secrets of
heaven as well.
The other angels dispersed to 'every corner of the Earth.'
In the Apocalypse of Abraham
In the extracanonical text the
Apocalypse of Abraham, Azazel is
portrayed as an unclean bird who came down upon the sacrifice which
Abraham prepared. (This is in reference to
Genesis 15:11: "Birds of prey came
down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away" [
niv]).
- And the unclean bird spoke to me and said, "What are you doing,
Abraham, on the holy heights, where no one eats or drinks, nor is
there upon them food for men? But these all will be consumed by
fire and ascend to the height, they will destroy you."
- And it came to pass when I saw the bird speaking I said this to
the angel: "What is this, my lord?" And he said, "This is disgrace
— this is Azazel!" And he said to him, "Shame on you, Azazel! For
Abraham's portion is in heaven, and yours is on earth, for you have
selected here, [and] become enamored of the dwelling place of your
blemish. Therefore the Eternal Ruler, the Mighty One, has given you
a dwelling on earth. Through you the all-evil
spirit [was] a liar, and through you [come] wrath and trials on the
generations of men who live impiously.
- :— Abr. 13:4-9
He is also associated with
the serpent (Satan) and
hell. In Chapter
23, verse 7, he is described as having seven heads, 14 faces,
"hands and feet like a man's [and] on his back six wings on the
right and six on the left."
Abraham says that the wicked will "putrefy in the belly of the
crafty worm Azazel, and be burned by the fire of Azazel's tongue"
(Abr. 31:5), and earlier says to Azazel himself, "May you be the
firebrand of the furnace of the earth! Go, Azazel, into the
untrodden parts of the earth. For your heritage is over those who
are with you" (Abr. 14:5-6).
Here there is the idea that God's heritage (the created world) is
largely under the dominion of evil — i.e., it is "shared with
Azazel" (Abr. 20:5), again identifying him with
Satan, who is also "the prince of this world"
(
John 12:31,
niv).
Dictionnaire Infernal
Collin de Plancy's
Dictionnaire Infernal (1863)
describes Azazel as the guardian of goats. On the 10th day of
Tishri, on
the feast of
the Expiation, it was Jewish custom to draw lots for two goats:
one for the Lord and the other for Azazel. The goat for the Lord
was then sacrificed and its blood served as
atonement. With the goat for Azazel, the high
priest would place both of his hands on the goat's head and confess
both his sins and the sins of the people. The goat ("scapegoate")
was then led into the desert and set free. Azazel then returned the
goat. Milton described Azazel as the first gate-teacher of the
infernal armies.
Modern Satanism
Azazel is revered as a physical/spiritual deity by many
Theistic/Spiritual Satanic groups as a Promethean bringer of
forbidden knowledge. Depictions of this entity vary from group to
group, but he is generally regarded as a
Luciferian force of enlightenment opposed to the
Hebrew deity
Yahweh, or the
Demiurge, who is usually viewed as an imperfect
tyrant, aimed only at keeping men from knowledge; knowledge of the
falseness of the reality of which man occupies and its creator,
thereby interpreting Azazel as a
Gnostic
liberator.
Literary references
Then [Satan] commands that ... be upreard
His mighty Standard; that proud honour claim'd
AZAZEL as his right, a Cherube tall:
Who forthwith from the glittering Staff unfurld
Th' Imperial Ensign
See also
References
- JewishEncyclopedia.com - AZAZEL
- JewishEncyclopedia.com - AZAZEL
- JewishEncyclopedia.com - AZAZEL
- JewishEncyclopedia.com - AZAZEL
- JewishEncyclopedia.com - AZAZEL
- Joy of Satan: Azazel
- Theology of the Church of Azazel
- Temple of the Black Light
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